


Cleanup

by Redshirt451



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Hunter: The Vigil, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 15:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21018404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redshirt451/pseuds/Redshirt451
Summary: Not everyone is as forgiving as the Doctor





	Cleanup

The end of the cigarette burned brightly. I held the base tightly between my fingers as I leaned back against the right wall of the bar. I knew the thing in between my fingers would kill me if given enough time. I also knew it wouldn’t be given that time. Not with the duty I had taken upon myself. I needed to relax anyway. With what I was going to do, there could be no room for error. In the meantime, I kept my watch.  
The New Mexican night had completely overtaken the bar. Patrons began to stream out with some regularity, some sober and responsible, others picking fights with the bouncer for keys they couldn’t be trusted with. A few couples stumbled out, some who had gone in together, others who had found each other inside. It was a pair of the latter that I set my eyes on. A bulky ogre of a man with a well-shaped blonde hanging off his arm. The man was saying something mirthful to the girl, who followed it up with ditzy laughter. A sort of drunken call and response. I waited for them to reach the limits of my eyesight, then beat a steady path towards the ogre’s truck. I ducked behind a Honda Civic as the man swung around in a paranoid drunken haze. “I thnk someon’s follwan us” he said in a half whisper while trying to keep his legs from collapsing under him. On cue, the blonde turned his head and planted a kiss on his gin soaked lips. “Ain’t no one here, but us baby” she said with a practiced artificial giggle, “Let me drive. You get some sleep so you’ll be ready”.  
His face, already aglow, became luminescent when he realized what she was implying. “Alright luv”, he said “You do the honours”. He slid into the passenger side, directed to it by her when his British instincts kicked in, and she gave me a confirmatory look as she slid behind the wheel. I jumped into the trunk and the 5150 sped off into the desert darkness. I lay prone and braced myself as my gut absorbed every bump and jolt on the ill-used road. I tried to focus on something else. I ended up thinking back, as I somehow always do, to when I’d started down my own rocky road.  
It always came back to John. When we had met, it was like he had been sent by God to give the closeted gay kid in the small conservative town someone to confide in. He never showed any romantic feelings for me, he was too much of a Baptist for that, but he provided a comforting shoulder to cry on and a trustworthiness to keep anything said between us to himself. He followed me into the Marines, although the green weenie ensured he couldn’t follow me any further. I went into the ATF from there, he went on to broader, if not better things, and joined UNIT. When we had enough vacation time, we’d grab a beer together, well root beer for him, and catch up. I would tell him about what new assault on the Second Amendment my agency had committed and he’d tell me the little he could about the six mind numbing cosmic horrors he had seen before breakfast. They were fun evenings.  
The truck finally came to a jerky stop. The ogre awoke with a start, then turned to the blonde with a grin and started to envelop her in a sloppy embrace. She looked through her faux passion to signal me with a twitch of her left eyebrow. I slid down from the trunk and, garrote wire in hand, silently opened the door. The man was too drunk and horny to hear it and only noticed my presence when the metal dug into his throat. He tried to cry out, but only a pathetic gurgle escaped his collapsing windpipe. The blonde stuck a rag full of chloroform onto his face before I could give into temptation and finish the job early. The man struggled weakly, then succumbed to the sweet smelling cloth.  
“You ok Jess?” I asked, as we began to drag the hulking form out into the desert landscape, “You didn’t fall in love with him at the last second?” She let out a half annoyed half amused grunt. “His mother would have a hard time loving him with a face like that” she said with a harsh laugh, “Assuming he has a mother.” I tried to ignore the last part. I try not to dehumanize the targets as much as some of my colleagues, but thinking of this thing having a family would put me on trains of thought that wouldn’t go anywhere good for my future employment. Besides, it made me think of John more. He had always trusted his mother, even to his detriment. When she told him there was a man in the sky that judged us from above, he believed her. When she told him his father loved him, despite all the evidence pointing otherwise, he believed her. And when she told him to join her and her friends in that damn church, he believed her. That was the last time he had believed her. Or anyone for that matter.  
A couple of rough slaps from Jess was enough to revive the ogre. He looked up at us with an expression of equal parts bewildered confusion and white hot anger, desperately trying to escape the zip ties that bound his hands and feet. “Henry Dunbar” I said, reciting from a well memorized script, “you are guilty of the murders of at least seven thousand American citizens, conspiracy to overthrow the legal government of the United States of America, and the destruction of public and private property. The penalty for these crimes is death. Do you have anything you would like to say before the sentence is carried out?”  
The ogre sputtered, trying to speak through the fog of alcohol and chloroform “The Doctor said he forgave us!”. I smirked despite myself. I wish I had a nickel for every time they said something like that. “The Doctor did forgive you,” I said, drawing a beretta from my coat, “Task Force Valkyrie did not.” With a cry of smothered rage he began to shift and churn into his true alien form. I gave a quiet sigh of relief. I always dealt with a twinge of guilt and remorse when they stayed human. As it stood now, I pulled the trigger like I was shooting a paper target at the range.  
I faded back to the day I began down the path leading to this moment. Two emails appeared in my inbox. One was a formal notice that John had been killed in action. The details of his death were obscured. UNIT agent’s emergency contacts aren’t given details over email, no matter how many clearances they have. As my head swam with the news, an encrypted message appeared with an embedded video. It showed John and his squad being lured into a church in Norway, where they were reduced to piles of hair and teeth by creatures from beyond the stars. Under the video was one question. “Do you want justice?” Looking back on it, the email should have read, “Do you want revenge?” I said yes that day. I said yes to learning about these and countless other creatures that threatened the country I loved and the world I lived on. I learned about the limp wristed efforts of the United Nations to make nice with these invaders. I learned about the man from space who stood behind it, who claimed to safeguard and mold the human race for its own good, while ignoring the cries for justice that came from the victims of his idealism. And I learned about the men and women who had sworn to answer those cries, regardless of what this “Doctor” and his UN cronies thought of it.  
I stopped pulling the trigger when the magazine was empty. The monster had fallen backwards into the ditch Jess and I had dug earlier that day. “You can do the honors tonight Ben.” she said with a soft tone, “One year ago today, right?”. “Yeah,” I said, getting out a match as Jess finished pouring the gasoline, “It was one year ago tonight that I joined the Cleanup”.


End file.
